1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a printer that prints out an image by discharging ink from nozzles and, more particularly, to a printer, a printer control program, a printer control method, an image processing device, an image processing program, an image processing method, and a storage medium storing the program therein, suitable for preventing clogging of ink filled in nozzles that are not used during printing process.
2. Related Art
In an existing ink jet printer that prints out an image by discharging ink from nozzles, a process (which is called flushing, or the like) is performed to discharge ink from all the nozzles at a constant period of time during printing process. In this manner, ink is prevented from clogging in the nozzles that are not used for printing. A flushing technology is, for example, described as an ink jet recording apparatus in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2004-106470 and described as a printer in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2004-345155.
The ink jet recording apparatus described in JP-A-2004-106470 is provided with a head movement driving portion that reciprocally moves a line ink jet printer head, which performs a single-pass recording mode, in an array direction of its nozzles, that is, in a main scanning direction, and then executes a head movement process in which the head movement driving portion is controllably driven to move the ink jet printer head in the array direction of the nozzles and a nozzle position changing process in which, in a direction opposite to the head movement direction at a pitch corresponding to the amount of shift of the ink jet printer head at this time, the positions of the nozzles, which discharge ink droplets, are shifted in the ink jet printer head as a whole. In this manner, the positions of the nozzles, which discharge ink droplets, have been shifted in the ink jet printer head as a whole, so that nozzles that do not discharge ink are reduced, and, hence, it is less likely to cause an ink discharge defect in the nozzles.
On the other hand, the printer described in JP-A-2004-345155 is configured so that a printer driver includes a counter that, when a group of recording elements that form a recording head of the printer is separated into a given number of separated recording element groups, accumulates the number of pixels recorded by each recording element group and an information transmitting device that transfers the recorded pixel number information, accumulated by the counter, to the printer. In this manner, by checking a print duty of each portion of the recording head, it is possible to perform a further detailed cleaning operation. Thus, the reliability of image quality is improved.
However, in the existing art described in JP-A-2004-106470, an exclusive mechanism is required for shifting the nozzles, so that there is a possibility that inconvenience, such as an increase in cost and/or an increased size of apparatus, occurs. On the other hand, in the existing art described in JP-A-2004-345155, it is only necessary to perform cleaning at desired portions, so that useless ink discharge can be prevented without requiring an exclusive mechanism. However, there is still a room for improvement in terms of performing cleaning in addition to a printing process.